


Duty and Love

by toyoto031999



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Gen, Jon Snow Deserves Better, Jon Snow Needs a Hug, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, POV Jon Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 17:41:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18921904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyoto031999/pseuds/toyoto031999
Summary: His live had always been a fight.





	Duty and Love

**Author's Note:**

> Game of thrones has come to an end and as disappointing as the ending was, it still left me heart broken. This work doesn't have a beta reader so there's going to be some mistakes and I apologize for that in advance.

Aegon Targaryen and Jon Snow. Heir to the Iron Throne and a bastard. Brother of the Nights Watch and a Wildling Lover. Dead and Alive. A Dragon and A Wolf. His life always had been a contradiction. All he had ever wanted was to belong. As a child, his greatest wish had been for his Lord father Eddard Stark to accept him as his son, for Lady Catelyn Stark to not look at him as if his very existence nullified her husbands love for her, to have a family without the over whelming shame that came along with his being, without the fear of being kicked out of the place that was his home and his world. That was the reason why he had joined the Nights Watch, so that before the moment could come when Lady Catelyn finally convinced her husband and his father that he was more trouble than his worth, before they could throw him out, he’d leave first. That way it would at least seem as if he had a choice. But he never had a choice. Bastards have no place in this world and there’s only one place for them to gain real Honor. The second reason , which almost everyone suspected was his wish to belong. For he never could fit in with anyone, too much of common blood to fit in with the lords and too much of noble blood to fit in with the commoners. 

He had been a boy, too young to know what it really meant to take the Black. His father had let him do it anyway. At that time it had both saddened him and made him happy. During his final nights in Winterfell, he’d sit by the fire in his room, long after the children had fallen asleep and the parents had retired to their chambers, long after the birds and the wolves had fallen asleep too. He’d stay awake and wonder if he had been allowed to go to Castle Black because it was a good way to get rid of him or because he was finally doing something to make his father proud. He could never figure out which one it was. Or maybe it was a little bit of both.

His Uncle Benjen had been the only one who had seen how lost he was, but he couldn’t make his decisions for him and at the end had yielded to his wishes and taken him along himself. Sometimes when Lady Catelyn was especially mean to him or when he saw his father show love or give praise to his other children, he stood in the shadows and watched and sometimes when Uncle Benjen was around he stood beside him and in those moments he secretly wished and prayed that he had not been born to his father but to his uncle. There was shame in that too but he’d take the shame that came along with a bit of love.

At the start Castle Black had been everything he had imagined and yet very different too. For in the more darker corners of his mind he had feared going to the wall. Rapists and murderers found their home at the wall, he knew but then he saw Lord Commander Mormont and his Uncle and the many others too who were there paying for no crimes other then maybe existing and he knew it would be alright. He found Sam. Sam was the kind of person who Theon would have made rude jokes about and Robb would’ve reprimanded him but laughed along too. But they were off to war, to rescue his father and sisters and Sam was loyal and the reason he had not abandoned his oath and become a traitor.

And so his days were long and yet even longer nights greeted him. Cold winter with no sun, but he loved the wall. Even Allister Thornes and the other’s crude remarks and sneered calls of ‘Lordling’ didn’t bother him much. But then his life never was that simple and his Uncle went missing. His father was executed. Loyalty, they said, It was Loyalty that cost him his head and he wondered what his loyalty would cost him. And then he stepped beyond the wall and a new world opened itself to him. He realized that there were so many things bigger than his desires and his wishes. He saw men die and children be slaughtered and women be raped, he killed the man he most admired because he asked and he heard of his brother head being cut off and sewn to the body of his dire wolf. He looked at Ghost and he wondered if that would be his end too. 

But he fell in love too. With Ygritte and her flaming hair, her sharp tongue and even sharper arrows that she fired. He fell in love so deeply that he wanted to stay, stay with her beyond the wall and have a place to belong, a family that truly loved him. But he was his father’s son at the end and loyalty and honor were always his fated downfall. “What is honor compared to a woman’s kiss”, Maestor Aemon had said and as he rode away with an arrow in his leg, away from his love and towards his duty, he wanted to say, “Nothing. Nothing compares.” But he still rode on and he still fought and he held his heart as it died in his arms. “I am yours as you are mine”, she had said and he wanted to tell her one last time that he was hers. She told him that they should’ve stayed in that cave. In the cave where he first touched her and where they became one, where he forgot his vows for a moment and wished for time to stop. And he said “ We’ll go back there”, even though they never could. Maybe he really did know nothing.

There was a war coming, bigger than between the Targaryen’s and the Baratheon’s, bigger than between the Nights Watch and the wildings, bigger than any war he had ever seen or heard of. It was between the living and the dead and once again his duty and his honor were more important than anything he needed or anything he wanted. But there was a small moment of joy where his brothers put their trust in him and made him the Commander. Even when Stannis put his greatest desire in front of him. Lord Jon Stark. The title could be his if he so desired and he did desire with all his heart and being but his duty. “My duty”, he reminded himself again and again and he refused even as if it meant crushing that voice inside him that suspiciously sounded like his younger self, cursing at him. But he finally had a place to belong. 

And then Stannis ordered Mance Rayder to bend the knee and fight for him. He saw with his own eyes what pride could do to people, how many lives it could destroy and so he crushed his as he signed on the letter to the Boltons asking for more men. He couldn’t let his people die because he was too prideful to ask. Mercy, It was mercy that fired an arrow that pierced Rayder’s heart and he wondered how many more times he could do this before it destroyed him. “Kill the boy”, said Maestor Aemon,” Kill the boy, Jon snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man rise”. And the boy was killed, stabbed in the heart by his own brothers because he was on the side of the living. Because he wanted to look beyond the differences. Darkness enveloped him and he slept.

He rose again as a man and he felt not quite right. Because he took his sword and he cut the rope. He saw Olly’s body swinging back and forth, his eyes bulging out, and he wondered what parts of himself he had left behind in the land of the dead. He would leave, he decided, He had paid the Watch with his life and so he would leave before he stopped recognizing himself, before he became a heartless man. But then Sansa walked through the gates and there was no more room for what he wanted. He saw her standing there in the courtyard of Castle black, her red hair falling down her back and her face sunken in and aged by years as if she had seen the worst of the world already and he felt another duty falling on his shoulders, threatening to crush him.

Another war he had to fight. And this time it was little Rickon whose body fell at hid feet, an arrow piercing his body, another piece of him broke and fell away as he raised his sword and cut man after man. He almost lost and a part of him wanted to close his eyes and let the horde of people crush him so that he may finally rest but the he remembered Sansa with her burning eyes and aged soul and her promise that she was not going back there alive if they lose. Duty. Duty, Duty. They won and he hit Ramsay Bolton again and again. For Sansa and for Rickon and for himself. Because he had never wanted this.

King in the North. It was for Robb, that title, and now it was his. So many people were putting their trust and belief in him that he could barely stand up straight with that weight on his shoulder. But he had a war to fight and a Queen to meet. So he left the North, his home, to Sansa and he sailed to Dragon Stone to meet Daenerys Targaryen. He saw Dragons sailing above the sky and armies that did not rest and the world opened up to him even more. He saw her snowy hair first, sitting on the stone throne and for a moment he saw himself in the way she held herself and the crushing weight of duty on her shoulders and maybe that is why he fell for her.

He was happy with her, even with the war approaching, he was happy for here was a place he belonged. A woman who he loved and who loved him, whom he was not forbidden to love, whom he kneeled to and whom he wanted to serve. He was happy because for the first time his duty and his love were not against each other. Sansa and Dany didn’t get along but they would see reason soon, he knew and Arya, little Arya with her needle and Bran , were both alive and safe, even though they both seemed different, more rough around the edges, harder but then again they had seen the world and its cruelties alone and they had made it. So he was happy.

But it was Jon snow that could be happy and he was not Jon Snow. Aegon Targaryen couldn’t be happy because once again it was duty against love and once again he had to choose one. Ans once again it was duty that he chose but the Night King was outside their door and he didn’t, couldn’t think about it. So he fought and he fought and he lost and he won and at the end of the battle as he stood before the great undead dragon Viseryon, he hoped for a second it would burn his being in its great flames. But the fire never came and he had another war to fight.

He believed in Daenerys, in the fact that she was a good Queen, because if she was not then he would have another, greater duty. If she was not then he would have to be Aegon and he wanted to be Jon. But he was wrong, you can never choose you are, he learnt, a harsh lesson. He stood helpless and watched as his men slaughtered men, women and children, raped and mutilated. He saw Daenerys riding Drogon, burning the city to ashes. He saw, God, did he saw and it weighed him down further. But the fight was over and ashes fell from the sky and Tyrion was throwing away his title for his dead people and urging him to remember his duty. Love is the death of Duty and Duty is the death of love. And he wondered once again why it had to be so. Why love and duty always had to be at war. 

He saw her snowy hair and his own dead heart lying on the ashy floor in front of the Iron Throne, his dagger piercing her form and he couldn’t find it in himself to weep. Duty. Duty. Duty. He wanted to die. He wanted to rest. The wall awaited him. It always welcomed broken men Tyrion told him. “But I’m not broken”, he wanted to say, “I’m already dead”. He rode to Castle black again and he saw Tormund waiting for him with Ghost and he felt no duty on his shoulder but he felt no love either. So he rode to the cave again. He was neither Jon Snow nor Aegon Targaryen, now he was a free man.


End file.
